Outer Coast of Washington and Oregon 2014 ESI Natural Hazards Polygons

The outer coast of Washington and Oregon is the geographic scope for this dataset of vector polygons depicting modeled tsunami inundation impact areas. It was created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as part of the Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) data, which characterizes marine and coastal environments by their sensitivity to spilled oil. The data includes information for shoreline habitats, sensitive biological resources, and human-use resources.

Use Cases

• Modeling tsunami inundation risk for coastal communities based on the described polygon impact areas.
• Assessing environmental sensitivity to oil spills based on the ESI framework mentioned in the description.
• Integrating natural hazard data with other human-use resource layers (e.g., parks, navigation) for comprehensive coastal zone management.
• Planning emergency response and resource allocation for areas identified as high-risk in the polygon data.

Strengths

• Data is part of the NOAA Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) framework, a standardized system for oil spill planning.
• Includes multiple human-use data layers for the region, such as parks, navigation, and political boundaries.
• Last updated metadata indicates a recent review date of 2026-03-13.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The primary data format is PDF, which may require conversion for geospatial analysis.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Modeled tsunami inundation impact areas, likely derived from hydrodynamic simulations.

Time Range

2014

Freshness

Metadata last updated 2026 03 13.

Geography

Outer coast of Washington and Oregon, USA